Bug 1331631

Summary: mention of ssh-keygen in ssh connect warning
Product: [Fedora] Fedora Reporter: Jozef Mlich <jmlich83>
Component: opensshAssignee: Jakub Jelen <jjelen>
Status: CLOSED EOL QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity: unspecified Docs Contact:
Priority: unspecified    
Version: 25CC: jjelen, mattias.ellert, mgrepl, plautrba, tmraz
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Hardware: Unspecified   
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Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
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Last Closed: 2017-12-12 10:47:58 UTC Type: Bug
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description Jozef Mlich 2016-04-29 06:26:18 UTC
Dear openssh maintainers, 

I would like to see better error message when ssh finger print changed. Ubuntu is doing that for a long time. Please find patch at attached url.

https://code.launchpad.net/~smoser/ubuntu/natty/openssh/lp-686607/+merge/43226/+index?

thanks

Comment 1 Jakub Jelen 2016-04-29 07:38:22 UTC
I can quote upstream maintainer Darren Tucker from the upstream bug [1]:

> Sorry, but having the error message suggest something that is exactly the wrong thing to do in the case of an active MITM attack is not something we want to do.

I share this opinion. We have no intention to diverge from upstream more than necessary. Especially not in this place which affects the only security check that is needed from the user to prevent MitM. Who knows what is doing will do that anyway and who does not know is advised to find out.

Unfortunately, you are right and Ubuntu ships this patch [2]. But it does not mean that we have to ship everything Ubuntu does.

Leaving open for constructive discussion or other insights, if there will be some, but I don't see any good reason for applying this patch.

[1] https://bugzilla.mindrot.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1843
[2] http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-branches/ubuntu/wily/openssh/wily/view/head:/debian/patches/mention-ssh-keygen-on-keychange.patch

Comment 2 Jozef Mlich 2016-04-29 08:09:42 UTC
I agree with better formulation of the message with explicit information "This could be Man in the middle attack". However I think it's worth it to show the command to remove SSH key when required. I find it a better solution than to delete known_hosts file like many people do as it's working for them but they are unaware of the security risk.

Some people even recommend to disable that check using:

Host *
   StrictHostKeyChecking no
   UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null

But I think this solution is far worse for security than the solution recommended above.

Comment 3 Jakub Jelen 2016-04-29 08:47:37 UTC
(In reply to Jozef Mlich from comment #2)
> Some people even recommend to disable that check using:
> 
> Host *
>    StrictHostKeyChecking no
>    UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null
> 
> But I think this solution is far worse for security than the solution
> recommended above.

Yes. It is worse, but it is not advised in the response to the possible MitM attack by the ssh tool itself so it is not a valid point to improve security.

Wording

> Offending key for IP in ...
>   remove with: ssh-keygen -f \"%s\" -R 

tells

> there is a problem, resolve it by doing this.

which is NOT what you should do in every situation. It is true that in most cases you DO that and the alarm is "false", but it is certainly not something you should do always without thinking.

Comment 4 Jan Kurik 2016-07-26 04:24:38 UTC
This bug appears to have been reported against 'rawhide' during the Fedora 25 development cycle.
Changing version to '25'.

Comment 5 Fedora Update System 2016-07-27 10:40:23 UTC
openssh-7.2p2-11.fc24 selinux-policy-3.13.1-191.8.fc24 has been submitted as an update to Fedora 24. https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2016-99191c4aab

Comment 6 Lukas Vrabec 2016-07-27 10:52:02 UTC
Reverting to NEW state. BZ was switched to MODIFIED due to wrong bodhi update.

Comment 7 Fedora End Of Life 2017-11-16 19:48:39 UTC
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Comment 8 Fedora End Of Life 2017-12-12 10:47:58 UTC
Fedora 25 changed to end-of-life (EOL) status on 2017-12-12. Fedora 25 is
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